As if we needed reminders. As if you couldn’t imagine this sort of thing happen. In case you need to show the difference in the two parties.

Show ’em this.

J.J. Holmes has severe cerebral palsy. He is 12 and is confined to a wheel chair.

On Saturday, his mother took him to a Trump rally, where he wanted to protest Trump’s treatment of folks with disabilities. So they raised a Hillary placard. And they were thrown out.

According to one report I read:

This is truly disturbing to me … What I witnessed while covering a Trump rally today. Wheelchair-bound JJ Holmes, 12, who has cerebral palsy, and his family were ordered out of Saturday’s Trump rally by Trump after they chanted for Hillary Clinton. JJ begged his mom, Alison, to travel over two hours so he could attend. JJ begged his mom, Alison, to travel over two hours so he could attend. Unable to speak, JJ communicates through a special device similar to Stephen Hawkings. JJ is passionate about politics and concerned about the future of all humans but especially those with disabilites. Alison said the family was kicked by Trump supporters and had to shield JJ’s wheelchair as Trump supporters gathered to push JJ’s wheelchair out of their space. Alison was called a child abuser and a murderer. This is just so, so sad! Tears are burning my eyeballs but then I look at JJ smiling afterwards when he asked his mom if she is proud of him.

Trump himself ordered the boy and his mother to be thrown out of the rally. His deplorable supporters taunted them on the way out. Taunting a disabled child? The lowest of the low.

That’s not exactly how the Democrats acted.

Instead, J.J. and his family got to meet President Obama.

Attribution: Valentina Pereda on Facebook (via Daily kos)

Since Hillary started her advocacy working to get disabled students admitted to school, I’m pretty sure s he’s good with Obama supporting her on this one.

Trump’s supporters were kicking at JJ’s wheelchair. What sort of people do that?

Oh yeah. Deplorable ones.

*****

Don’t be confused by the second half of my title. I don’t think that Hillary IS chicken. Nope, not a bit.

But she DOES makes a fine chicken dish that made it into the 1987 Congressional Club Cookbook, which has recipes from all sorts of congress members, their spouses, governors and their spouses. Both Bill and Hillary have recipes in it, befitting the first power couple — both cook.

You will be surprised to know that I am on Trump’s mailing list. But I am, and I have been for ages. I’m always curious what they are up to, what they’re telling their folks, and what sort of information they think will get folks to send them money.

I’m not sure which polls they’re talking about in this fundraiser. Because the ones I’m reading won’t put Donald Trump into the White House.

Email sent to me

And you know what? I’m really OK if Trump ends up in the White House. As long as it’s not located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC.

There are two other White Houses nearby. Both are for sale.

The White House on Georgetown Pike in McLean VA. Photo Image Washington Post

White House Towlston Road, McLean VA Photo Image Washington Post

These White Houses are both for sale according to this article in the Washington Post. So Donald Trump can have the White House. Either of these two. Let’s elect to put Trump in a different house all together.

Tomorrow morning, I will leave for work not completely accessorized. Not being much of a fashionista, that’s not normally a problem. But tomorrow I will stop to make sure I have the perfect accessory:

It’s Super Tuesday, and Virginia is in with the in crowd of mostly southern states holding their primaries.

Strangely, here in Virginia, it doesn’t feel much like there is an election coming up. TV ads are not constant, and while we’ve been getting a lot of campaign calls, there aren’t any more annoying calls than usual.

Most unusual is the almost complete lack of political signs. For the past 8 years, there have been far more political signs than voters around here. The absence of them, without any sort of ordinance prohibiting them, makes me think that everyone around me is secretly supporting Donald Dfrump.*

Anyway, I’m sure you’re dying to know: I’m voting for Hillary.

Philosophically, I’m really in Bernie’s camp. I’d love government-sponsored healthcare. I’d love to make college free. I would love to erase income inequality.

But I’m a pragmatist.

Even if Bernie could get elected (and I don’t agree with pundits that claim he can’t), well, I spent 10 years watching the sausage mill that is our government. And I simply don’t think Bernie can do it.

Hillary Clinton has my vote because I think she will be a good president. Because she’s smart and capable. Because she knows the system inside, outside and upside and downside.

Is she perfect? Is she my dream candidate? Nope. I was for Obama in 2008 (actually, I wanted him to be my candidate beginning in 2004).

I am not blind to the problems with her. I would rather a flawed candidate than one who is promising more than he can deliver.

And I think that Hillary can beat Trump or whichever GOP candidate is vomited out of a brokered convention.

So early tomorrow, I will cast my vote and get my sticker.

ElectionsMatter.Makeyourvoiceheard.

* If you haven’t seen John Oliver’s show on Donald Trump, get yourself some popcorn:

Yup. Who woulda thunk that an antidote would be in a cookbook! But this one is special. You see, it was published in 1987, when the folks in government still believed that the government has an important role in the country. When the government is, essentially, how we all contribute to improving our society. Educating our kids, making workplaces safer, the air and the water and the land cleaner. Yeah, I know it was published at the end of the Reagan years, but that cancer hadn’t yet metastasized.

Here’s the antidote to 2015:

Hillary’s Chicken.

Congressional Club Cook Book, 1987, at page 266

As you can see from years of cooking smears, this is a well-used recipe. It is simple and delicious. And I’m going to make it for New Years’ Day — and often between now and November.

Because while this woman eats chicken. She is NOT a chicken.

Hillary Clinton, Testifying for 11 hours at the Bengazi show trial. Photo Image, LA Times

And the GOP? I see little evidence that the GOP clowns are anything but chicken, can you?

Google Image

HappyNewYear!

***

It’s a little hard to read the instructions from this picture —

Combine all sauce ingredients, mixing until well blended. Wipe each piece of chicken dry and coat well with sauce. Place chicken,skin side up, in shallow baking pan.Tuck edges under, forming a compact shape, about 1-1/2 inches thick. Roast in preheated oven at 450 degrees, basting occasionally with pan drippings. Bake until opaque nearly to center, about 14-18 minutes, depending on thickness. Remove to warm plates. Spoon pan juices over chicken and sprinkle with parsley. Makes 4 servings. May be frozen.

On the front page of today’s New York Times is an editorial I could easily have written. If I could write that well. If I worked for the NYTimes. If I had millions of readers who’d nod and say “Right On!”

Image credit: Eiko Ojala – for the New York Times, 12/4/15

Actually I’m mixing this image from an editorial published yesterday in the NY Times. Because like me, the NY Times believes that we need sensible gun laws. And so they, like me, keep beating that dead horse.

**************

Here’s today’s front page editorial reproduced in full:

End the Gun Epidemic in America

All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.

But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.

Opponents of gun control are saying, as they do after every killing, that no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal. That is true. They are talking, many with sincerity, about the constitutional challenges to effective gun regulation. Those challenges exist. They point out that determined killers obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have strict gun laws. Yes, they did.

But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not. Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.

It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.

Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.

What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?

**************

It’s me again.

Yes I know that I keep beating this dead horse. I know that we are all feeling hopeless. But really, it is up to us. And the remedy can be found in the ballot box. Gun Control must be a make or break criteria for any vote we cast in 2016 and beyond. Because the folks in office today are cowards. They fear the retribution of citizens over gun control legislation. So let’s show them that they work for us. For the US. Not just for the NRA.